


Tomorrow is dead to me

by Prototype_UP77



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, Lemon, M/M, No Fluff, Slightly Dark Harry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-25
Updated: 2020-12-01
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:06:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 19,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24918061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prototype_UP77/pseuds/Prototype_UP77
Summary: Draco has no choice but to return to this horrible house. When Potter bursts in, Draco also has to face his biggest, best-kept secret. As always, Potter does not give up when it comes to uncovering things that don't concern him.A translation from german.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter
Comments: 4
Kudos: 45





	1. Chapter 1

Reluctantly, Draco stood on the faded bricks of the clinker stairs, his hand on the tarnished doorknob, the other trembling, clenched into a fist, encircling the warm, smooth brass of the key. To prevent his nervous eyes from falling on the outside wall of the house, causing a constant panic, he held it firmly to the floor, as if the moss on the stones was covering up a secret that would only reveal itself to him over time.

It wasn't that Draco hated the Malfoy family's old townhouse, although he had every reason to do so because he always hated everything that exuded that mediocre ugliness of rich people, which was one thing above all: befitting and therefore perfectly ordinary. This place, crammed with solid, tasteless, harmless art treasures that could bore the viewer to death, was in Draco's memory the sad center of senseless elegance, which was useless as to give the appearance of being wanted.

In truth - and it took some strength to allow the thought at all - he had feared the house since he first had to enter it.

That day, too, his hair buckled when he put the key in the lock. He took a deep breath, paused without gasping, and at that withered moment between two seconds the house seemed to hold its breath too. With an audible thump in his stomach, Draco turned the key and the world fell silent as the click broke through the old lock. He imagined that there was a loud echo through the empty rooms.

Then he pushed open the door and stared into a narrow, dark hallway. Dust whirled up in the cold glow of light that the dying day squared past its outline onto the floor. He quickly held the cool sleeve of his shirt in front of his nose and blinked until he saw the outline of an ancient chest of drawers, steeped in history, that stood on the wall between two passages into the parlor. A marble bust stood on top of it, appearing unreal in the half-light. He remembered this piece because it scared him as a child. It looked at him from its smooth, dead eyes, a lazy, knowing smile on its lips. Draco grimaced and wondered why such a person should be immortalized in marble because he had to suppress the need to blow it up with a spell.

He didn't have to go in to know that this house wasn't just deserted - it had long since died. His last visit was barely eight years ago (he had managed to escape the social obligations of a Malfoy in London after enrolling at Hogwarts), but it seemed like a century. Even though Draco's body trembled from the cold and his hands were red and numb, he couldn't move to close the door. Wouldn't it be as if he was closing the heavy lid of a stone sarcophagus over himself, with no way to ever free himself?

He paused again, leaving space and time for the pressing question to expand until it filled it. And what if he didn't; what if he stumbled out and went back home? He traced the subtle swing of his mother's satisfied smile, which would embrace and kiss him, whether he wanted to or not, glad to postpone his unruly attitude towards her plans.

And his father?

The cold voice bubbled over his mind and penetrated his chest with a grim determination. "As I expected, Draco. You don't want to meet your parents' expectations, but the price of your rebelliousness is just too high for you. A weakling through and through, you are and will remain. It is hideous, I am ashamed of you. Get into your room!"

As soon as he became aware of the silence around him again, he faced rotten loneliness and closed the door behind him.

"From now on I'm no longer your problem, father", he whispered into the darkness and groped for the wand in the silk breast pocket of the shirt. His pounding heartbeat interweaved with the emptiness, making it seem as if the rotten corpse of the house had started to rumble around him.

Draco smiled hollowly. Perhaps he was wrong (that could not be ruled out), but pervasive unrest flowed into him, nourished by everything he feared about this house. Not long and it would finally come to life.

Even before he had completed the swing of his wand, which ignited the flames in the blind glass balls on the walls, he felt that he was no longer alone.

* * *

The numbness in Draco's stomach had spread and caught his thoughts.

Gratefully, he accepted this condition and put the key in a small shell that had been attached to the wall like a holder, revealing a precious pearly shimmer in the flickering light of the flames. A mermaid lolling around the edge of the bowl smiled cheerfully and indicated a bow.

The bowl also looked like one of those works of art that he despised. The mermaid's breast, normally bare in the real world, was covered with green fish scales, so as not to hurt any feeling of shame. In the world of his parents, there was a principle that deeply offended Draco's off-tastes anyway: the more prudish the art, the greater the demand, and the more expensive it was to be traded. But in the middle of a dark hallway, heavily hung with immobile portraits of grim old people from another time, it looked like cheapest junk.

As was typical of such old-magic places that had served to approach the fine Victorian Muggle society, the kitchen was only accessible through the servants' dormitory; an old, draughty chamber at the end of the dark hallway, which gave the impression of having housed several generations of poor people at the same time.

Draco tried not to let his eyes wander, for his thoughts had melted into an imperceptible hum. Letting them swell again by allowing himself to become aware of the misery could quickly end fatally. It was enough for him to remember the possessions of foreign Muggles that were still scattered here as if the residents had left in undue haste. Linen hanging over bare nails and dusting, open suitcases, half-covered by wooden bed frames, that seemed to spew their contents on the floor.

He knew that no one in his family had ever touched these things and that the picture in his memory would be the same that he was now fading out; his parents thought to employ human servants was a risky practice that opened the door to thieves.

Although he walked slowly and moved almost noiselessly, he couldn't hear anything unusual. The old house lay still amid the wind blowing against the outside walls. Shouldn't the rotten wood he was standing on creak? Shouldn't the wind whistle and shake the windows?

He gritted his teeth. _Don't think now. There can be nothing. You just can't think._

The pressure hurt his jaw, but Draco didn't allow himself to relax. Not even when his fingertips touched the gnarled wooden door he leaned against before opening it.

In contrast to the rest of the house, where the gradual aging was seen in a rather reserved way, the kitchen was in a state that defied description. The dust had settled on all surfaces like an inch deep woolen covering and damp stains on the wallpaper shimmered black in the light of his wand. There was a foul smell in the air.

Of course, he had known that his grandfather Abraxas Malfoy, the former owner of the house, had not used this room. There had been enough ways, wizard or not, to get fresh, cooked food without ever letting yourself down making it. Even long after his grandmother passed away, long after the entire servants were released. But letting a good room deteriorate appeared shameful to him now that he would have to deal with it himself.

Suppressing the disgusting shudder, Draco took generous steps around the massive stove, which was filthy and immense, almost half the wall, and reached for the wall cupboards above the counter, where he suspected the dishes. A few dusty cups could still be found. He quickly took them out and closed the closet again, because the musty smell that had escaped made his stomach lurch.

He looked doubtfully at a free-standing washbasin next to the work surface, which had seen better days, but looked pleasantly usable compared to the rest of the room, except for the greenish coating in the stone basin. He twisted a rusted gear on a wide, curved tube and grimaced as brownish water gushed into the basin.

Was it only a year since his parents last stayed in this house? Draco wondered. What did they drink?

As the muddy water thundered on the stone, Draco felt paralyzed with discouragement. He watched it foam and bubble through the rusted metal grate into the drain as he went through his options. As small as their number was, one thing was certain: he would not be able to stay here!

He could apparate home and endure his father's disgust at him, accept that his mother would stand protectively in front of him, giving Lucius even more reasons for his contempt. But at some point, he would forgive him and grant him his inheritance again, and Draco would never have to think again about where he could get clean water - or anything to eat.

For a couple of weeks, he could certainly stand it with his friends. Nott would not be that bad, because he was quiet and reserved and certainly not reluctant to rise in the favor of a Malfoy (Draco would only have to hide from him that he now had none of it). Pansy would take him in without any social ulterior motives, but he dreaded what she could ask of him in return (there was a secret she knew existed - she certainly wouldn't let go until he told her). The only thing worse than Pansy would be Blaise Zabini, who lived in good conditions but was not one to whom Draco would entrust anything (he carefully avoided the thought of what Zabini had done to him). Finally, there would be Gregory Goyle. He would surely have him live with him as long as Draco wanted to, but he wasn't the same after the terrible night Vincent Crabbe had died in the fiendfyre.

Each of them was certainly a possible alternative to this haunted house - but Draco couldn't bring himself to choose one.

By now the water had become clear. So at least Draco still had some time to make a decision. Instead of cleaning the cups in the water and washing off the sticky dust film, he put the wand on the counter so that the shining tip was pointing at the basin, held the still cleaner hands and let the water run in, then drank in hasty tips.

Carelessly wiping his hands on his pants, he turned. Behind him stood three chairs grouped around a narrow table. They may have shone in fresh gray ages ago, but that could only be guessed at, in places where the dirt had not yet stuck.

It didn't matter to Draco now. He thought of the fine furniture that stood in one of the salons, protected from dust and dirt under white sheets, smiled mockingly, and then simply dropped onto one of the chairs.

Wasn't it what he wanted when he defended himself against his parents? An entirely different experience, a different life than the one that had always been before him. "Blame yourself", he said aloud, wiping his wet eyes until they burned.

Suddenly it creaked as if something had moved in the shadows of the house. The wind began to whistle the windows and Draco, whose hands were frozen on his cheeks in the movement, suppressed the urge to jump up and snap his wand.

_There is nothing. You mustn't think. Do not talk. Not breathing. Then there is nothing._

The shadows in front of the kitchen door contracted as if a dark shape were forming out of them.

_You just imagine that. The house is just a house. Nothing was ever found, no matter what you wanted to see -_

A loud click that made Draco wince, and suddenly a wave of cold light swept across the room, pushing the shadows out of Draco's field of vision and the ghosts out of his thoughts.

Reaching out for a yellowed switch on the wall, Harry Potter stood in front of the door.


	2. Chapter 2

Draco froze.

Though the fear slowly flowed out of him, disbelief made him blink, and a question had settled in his mind. Unable to put it into words, he cleared his throat first as he watched Potter lower his wand. The rosy lips formed words that faded unheard in the hammering of Draco's racing heart.

Potter's bright green eyes twisted, seemingly annoyed, and he tugged nervously at the obviously too-tight stand-up collar of his lime green cloak - a color that did not flatter him, Draco thought. Finally, he took a deep breath.

"What of all things are you doing here, Malfoy?" said Potter loudly, trying to drown out the muffled clang of a once melodious and valuable clock striking the hour.

It was an almost outrageously brash tone to use in such a situation, and even more outright absurd to ask Draco of all people such a thing, so an uncontrollable giggle spilled out of him and made its way between his fingers on his lips to Potter's ears.

"You think that's funny? A crazy dare? I've got news for you, Malfoy - Even if you and your parents wiggle out of all negotiations like eels, you're not above the law!" Anger had made his cheeks flush red, which contrasted interestingly with his pale skin.

With more effort than he would ever admit to himself, Draco put on a sardonic smile. He suspected he had succeeded well, for Potter's eyes darkened with anger; a powerful moment in which it seemed as if time were turning back and they were facing each other again as schoolboys, but it did not last long. Potter suddenly averted his eyes and let them roam the room, searching for a place where he could safely let them rest.

The smirk on Draco's face became a grimace that not only took effort to maintain, but downright pained him. "And you do?" snapped Draco, though he didn't feel like it.

"I'm acting according to the law, Malfoy," Potter blubbered, glaring at the gigantic hearth, which looked even more decrepit under the overhead light than it did in the delicate cone of Draco's wand. "You, at any rate, are obstructing official surveillance, so I would advise you to leave this place at once."

Gradually Draco felt more secure again, because this was one of those situations he had experienced thousands of times before: Potter was raging against him and had no means of actually doing anything to him. Unless, of course, he was acting illegally.

What a thought!

Draco crossed his arms in front of his chest and leaned his back against the crumbly back of the chair (he would be able to throw away the white shirt, but who would be surprised, considering this squalid place?). "Even as a famous apprentice auror, beloved by all, you have no right to expel me from my own house - quite the contrary. What is the name of your superior, Potter?" purred Draco in the most arrogant tone that had ever crossed his lips.

Potter's gaze shot to him, and his expression twisted uneasily. Nervously, he stepped from one foot to the other. "This house is yours?" he squeaked, blinking frantically. "I didn't know -"

Oh, that wonderful naivete of dull Gryffindors! Draco allowed himself a self-righteous smile before continuing. "Tell me the name of your superior, Potter! You're required by law to do so when you enter private homes - not to mention the fact that you'll need a warrant if we're to be entirely correct. And that's what we want, isn't it?"

Like swelling strokes on a watercolor painting, red streaks spread across Potter's skin and ran down his neck. It was fascinating and upsetting at the same time, but Draco kept control of the reflex to stare at those marks out of excitement - or even to reach out his trembling fingers for them as if he were a madman. Instead, he wedged them into the fabric of his shirt.

"My instructor is Hayder Trepton," Potter replied tonelessly, rubbing the back of his neck.

"And?"

When this conversation had started, Draco hadn't formed a plan. All he had wanted was to tease Potter a bit, to get his feet back on the ground and concentrate on the things he knew how to do (which was more than could be said for haunted houses that flooded you with mortal fear when you were no longer expecting it). But now it looked like a special opportunity was about to reveal itself to him, of which there were so few. Especially when it involved Potter himself. Draco's mouth went dry with excitement, his heart began to flutter noticeably in his chest, spreading an uncomfortable heat across his skin. Waiting for the answer became inescapable torture.

Potter closed his eyes in agony and took a deep breath before launching into a retort, and it was at that moment that something inside Draco broke. It was already clear that it was going to be the answer he was so desperately waiting for, and instead of the expected triumph, he felt disillusioned in a brutal way, because he already knew how he was going to play his cards - and completely unmask himself in the process.

"And I don't have a search warrant," Potter said tonelessly, clutching his wand so that the veins seemed to emerge dark purple from the back of his hand.

A shiver ran down Draco's spine.

_You could still seize the opportunity. Save your family's reputation, and your father will have no choice but to respect you._

"Now then, Potter. There are a few ways this can go, but I can promise you right now that none of them will go down pleasantly for you in any way, shape, or form," Draco said, his mouth twisted into a faint grin. He rose before bracing himself on the tabletop with both hands and leaning his upper body in Potter's direction. "For me, on the other hand -" He interrupted himself to let the sentence he had started hang in the air and increase the pressure.

In his experience, Potter would be very sensitive to this. Possibly even more lawbreaking could be expected, and while Draco imagined himself staring at Potter with a bleeding nose and his best look of disappointment, he was already thinking about what he would say. _"Do you care about your career? You can write it off if I report you. Violent aurors who just barge into other people's houses and then assault them are not employable anywhere!"_

If it were that easy to persuade Potter to surrender, he would never have become a folk hero beloved by all. Draco had hoped he would revolt, but he had not been prepared for the true extent of the storm he had conjured.

"Yes, report me, Malfoy! Tell your father, report me to my instructor; do what suits you best, but blackmailing a public figure is surely just what the Wizengamot is still lacking to come to a more correct assessment of your punishability!" he spat.

Against what he had expected, Potter did not budge. On the contrary, he crossed his arms in front of his chest, and instead of letting any reason burn up in his anger, he simply didn't let Draco's venom get to him.

To make matters worse, Potter was right.

Careful still to maintain an appearance of impenetrable superiority, Draco raised an eyebrow and groaned in boredom. In contrast to his façade, however, he was impressed by the power Potter exuded. Sometime between their school days, the end of the Dark Lord, and his training as an Auror, he had lost the clumsiness and shed all childishness. But that intimidating appearance that many adult wizards possessed wasn't it alone. There was something lurking in his movements, in the way he tensed his chest, tightened his shoulders, pierced him with his gaze. The hand that had now raised the wand again was free of trembling and quivering.

"Just tell me your demands, Malfoy. I want to see what you've come up with for me. What do you think I have to do if I want to prevent you from ratting me out?" he said in a cold tone of voice that made his feral smile seem all the more perilous.

Perhaps it was this moment that Draco's mask began to crumble, but he tried hard not to let the fear that flowed chillingly in his stomach leak out.

Draco had thought he had set a trap for Potter, had lulled himself into a sense of security, only to be proven wrong in the end. In truth, it had been he who had played himself for a fool. His thoughts fluttered unsteadily sometimes in one direction and then in another, as if they were nothing but dead leaves in the wind, while he helplessly searched for a way out that he would never find. Powerless, he dropped backward onto the chair and rested the back of his head on the filthy backrest.

Potter looked at him again, and this time he did not avert his eyes. All at once, the silence became ominous, as Draco was overcome with a sense that his situation was worsening with every second he didn't answer Potter. "I wasn't blackmailing you," he whispered.

He wanted to break the silence. No longer give Potter the opportunity to raise his eyebrows in a wait-and-see manner and stare down at him. But that he'd been lying had been obvious from the start - and without his friends at his side to tug at and dictate his thinking, Potter seemed to realize it, too.

His jaw tightened, and Draco's denial had wiped the blasphemous grin from his face. "With every lie, it gets worse for you."

Draco was certain of that. The cool, harsh sound of Potter's voice was frightening, for nothing about it reminded him of the boy who had been so gentle that he could not have harmed anyone - unless, of course, one had earned it without question, as Draco had in his school days. With the doubt of what he saw and heard, however, came an idea that could maneuver him out of this terrible situation. He swallowed dryly and clenched his fingers around the dingy armrest, and as if this posture had released a spell that drained all his strength, his whole body began to tremble. He realized that he would not be able to take it back. And that he couldn't possibly estimate what he would unleash.

"Your friends really held you back back at Hogwarts, didn't they?" he asked. The words sounded slurred, as if the fear in his chest had blurred them. Potter winced almost imperceptibly, but visibly tried not to react, and Draco hurried on. "I mean, at least Granger would have insisted on doing it right. With the right intention and the right methods. And now look at you. Standing here, issuing orders like my father's incarnation, making a joke out of the limits of your profession that everyone but you doesn't understand. My respects, by the way, because it must have been really hard to hide the _real_ Potter, the dark Potter, from your friends and the whole world all your school years."

The success of his approach became immediately apparent. Potter turned white as a sheet, and the superiority was knocked out of him more with each syllable, until he seemed somehow.... limp, making it difficult for Draco to deliver the final blow with his only weapon. Even as he spoke, a bitter taste spread through his mouth. "I have something to learn from you."

Potter averted his eyes so quickly that his pain-filled grimace was only visible for a split second, but the flicker was enough to throw Draco's heart out of rhythm.

_Careless, far too rough. Why can't you get the upper hand on your damn feelings just once_? he scolded himself in his mind.

"Just shut your bloody trap, Malfoy. You don't know what you're talking about," Potter growled, still looking off to the side. It seemed like he wanted to say more, and time slowed down in an unbearable way, until the moment Draco opened his mouth, not knowing what to say.

You know I didn't blackmail you.  
It almost sounds like someone has accused you of not being yourself before. Is that so?  
If you think I'm going to leave, you're wrong. So you might as well tell me what you want here.

Although strictly speaking none of this was a lie, none of these sentences would ever pass Draco's lips. He knew himself well enough to know that he would strike the wrong tone, for that was one of his traits that had manifested itself in every meeting between them.

Draco squinted his eyes in frustration. How had he been able to ruin a great opportunity like this, to have Potter at his mercy, in such a way?

As cold shackles snaked around his wrists and pinned his arms to the chair, he gasped and snapped his eyes open. Heart pounding wildly, he searched the room for a poltergeist or other dark attacker, but there was only Potter, pointing his wand at Draco.

It wasn't the wide grin on the pale face that worried Draco, but the mere fact that Potter had taken advantage of his carelessness.

"Now we'll talk about your demands, Malfoy. And then I'll tell you mine."


	3. Chapter 3

Before Harry Potter had tied him to a chair in his own decrepit kitchen, it would never have occurred to Draco that such behavior, remarkable in its ruthlessness, was at all realistic for the boy who had saved their world.

The thought that perhaps this was not Potter at all forced its way up from the depths of a memory he had been trying, so far unsuccessfully, to suppress. Filled with a dark foreboding, he searched the previous conversation for a clue, for anything that might disprove his apprehension. Only his reaction to the accusation of acting like Lucius Malfoy fit Potter's pattern. Everything else seemed to belong to an entirely different person. To mock Draco, perhaps as an act of reckoning, he conceded to him, but to attack when the opponent had closed his eyes, was unarmed and thus defenseless? Never in a million years.

With his eyes narrowed to slits, Potter slowly approached. There was no hesitation in his movements, no question, not the slightest uncertainty. The longer hair had fallen into his face, half hiding the provocative smirk of his pink lips.

It was a posture he had seen all too often in the common room of his house. Demonstrative superiority. What was a daily exercise in Slytherin surroundings seemed simply unnatural on a person who had shone so reliably in the past that he would do so forever in Draco's mind.

Worse. It perverted everything Draco found so repulsive about Potter into the opposite.

He sat down on the table in front of Draco in an emphatically nonchalant manner, propping his elbows on his thighs as he continued to keep his gaze fixed on him. "Well, Malfoy. Why don't you just get started? We've got forever, but I can't imagine you're particularly comfortable. That my satisfaction might loosen your bonds, I'm sure you suspect. You must have experience with situations like this, right?"

The smile on his face turned too dark to convince Draco of the friendly pitch he had adopted - if he disregarded the fact that this rhetorical ploy was, of course, completely transparent, so obvious that Draco had to stifle a laugh. This bumbling approach, probably intended to make him feel he wasn't being blackmailed in the first place and was choosing to cooperate on his own, diluted his fear.

But it wasn't enough to make him believe that the one perched in front of him, not taking his eyes off him, was actually Potter. It was no secret that the Savior was not much of a talker. Faking something like that didn't require a lot from practiced intelligence gatherers.

"Oh, of course," Draco replied, allowing that sarcastic undertone that had forced itself onto his tongue to show. "I suppose if I don't get myself sorted out for the next ... say, fifty minutes, you will have to go to the bathroom for a minute. Or maybe you'll do it right here. There are plenty of options, after all, especially for someone like you."

With his heart thumping wildly in excitement, Draco searched Potter's face for the only reaction that seemed appropriate. He looked into the bright eyes, exploring his forehead and the corners of his mouth for some sign of confusion, but to his alarm, Potter's expression hardened before he turned his head away and eluded Draco's scrutiny.

_If this were really Potter, he wouldn't have understood instantly that you were talking about Polyjuice Potion._

"Who sent you? Was it my father? Does he think I'm going to fall for this cheap trick?" cried Draco, trying to jerk free of the shackles. But magical restraints always adjusted, and so they drew tighter, clamping uncomfortably around his skin.

Potter slid off the tabletop and trotted slowly to the center of the room.

"What's he paying you? I'll get you five times that if you'll release me and tell me who hired you!"

Fear gradually reared as a solid lump in Draco's throat. Potter himself, changed as he seemed, would never have allowed himself to be bribed, but secretly he had to admit to himself that being at _his_ mercy would not have been the worst development.

"Please," Potter blabbed, laughing humorlessly but still keeping his back turned to Draco. "Do you really think anyone would act on your father's behalf these days?"

The recognition sent an icy chill down Draco's spine. The way he strung together the snottily uttered words, in Potter's appearance at that - how could it have taken him so long to see through that unspeakable costume?

"Zabini," Draco hissed, suppressing the urge to spit. Disgusted, he noted the wince from Potter's body. "After all you've done, you dare ambush me here and tie me up? You dare to go around breaking into other people's houses disguised in Potter's flesh? And what is the point of all this? After all, you've already ... _convinced_ me to do you favors - haven't I long since proven that I'm reliable in that regard?"

After all the exertion of today, the fight against his parents, his headlong escape, the terror of this damned place and this dishonest confrontation, his muscles began to quiver. What at first looked to Draco like the inevitable consequences of fatigue, flared in his heart as anger. For this act, Zabini would rot in Azkaban - Draco would make sure he never left the prison again!

Zabini turned and eyed Draco with a cool stare that burned like a sneer on his skin from Potter's normally warm eyes. "What on earth is there to stop me? I can come in and out of your houses as I please."

Grumbling with anger, Draco resisted the temptation to tug at his bonds so that they would cut into his arm; although physical bruises could be a great support if he ever got out of here and pressed charges against Zabini (finally, finally, finally he had him), he wasn't going to let that asshole hurt him again.

_Except that from now on, you'll never have me in your hands again, you fucking freak. As long as I'm disinherited, you can't blackmail me with the Malfoys' reputation anymore!_

"So what do you want from me now, Zabini? Since you've already come all this way to trap me, perhaps you'd like to get to the point soon?" taunted Draco, biting his tongue to keep from spitting out the profanities that were building sorely in his throat.

Potter's hands clenched in the hem of the ugly cloak before he glanced straight at him. His face was devoid of emotion, but Draco was sure that the smooth facade would nearly burst with tension if he could only look closer.

"I'd like to delve into what brought us together back then, Malfoy," Zabini said coldly, parting Potter's lips into a cruel smile.

Hoping that Zabini had cracked an agonizing joke, Draco waited for him to continue speaking, but he merely crossed his arms in front of his chest, allowing an uncomfortable ball of excitement and nausea to grow in Draco's stomach.

This was unexpected.

Zabini had no way of knowing that Draco was no longer susceptible to blackmail, so he obviously wanted to tighten the pressure and have a little fun in the process. So if Draco said no, he would suspect that he had lost his leverage. Stupid Zabini was not, so it was only a stone's throw to the thought that he might soon face arrest. What would the wizarding world do if they learned that someone had misused their savior's body - and his official post as an apprentice at the Auror Headquarters - to gain a personal advantage? That such an offense would not be treated as a minor crime was evident from the friendship between Potter and the minister alone.

So what would Zabini do to prevent that? With no leverage, there was only one thing to do, and Draco's heart began to pound. When he considered what Zabini's undignified mother had done to her husbands, it no longer seemed so far-fetched that the son would also be capable of murder if he saw his comfortable life threatened. Despite the peril in which he was hovering, his thoughts became clear. He had to swallow his pride to lull Zabini to safety. Bound and without his wand, it was his only chance.

With deliberate effort, Draco screwed up his face. "I hope you choke on your own tongue, Zabini!" he groaned.

Really, a first-rate spectacle.

"Now was that a yes or a no?" sneered Zabini darkly. Potter's voice boomed in Draco's ears, and he hoped that this distortion could be erased from his memory, lest it overshadow the last sentence the real Potter had addressed to him a perceived eternity ago.

"What choice do I have?" hissed Draco, convulsing. Briefly, the idea of agreeing and then, when Zabini loosened his bonds, grabbing his wand and cursing him into another dimension, brushed him.

A tempting idea, but very risky. If something went wrong, he would merely provoke Zabini to fight back. No, if he wanted to get out of here in one piece, he had to play along until Zabini left. It would only cost him his dignity.

"Then recreate the situation exactly as it was, Malfoy. Feel free to do so." Looking at Draco's devastated expression, he chuckled, then moved closer again.

Something about the words struck Draco as strange. As Zabini stood waiting beside the table, he pondered what exactly it was, but the physical proximity made it hard for him to concentrate. "I'm going to need my arms for this, Zabini," Draco whispered, shuddering as his gaze dripped down Potter's face and froze on the hands that rested on the tabletop.

Potter's fingers, contrary to his otherwise uncouth appearance, were finely cut, slender, and somehow soft. Draco knew them well. He had often watched them in his dreams, idly stroking the slender chest, but he had forbidden himself to remember whenever his mind lingered on it. But now that he had realized what he was about to do - what did it matter to resurrect the image at this point?

He was going to betray himself anyway; he was going to let himself be defiled again voluntarily and in full possession of his mental powers, so it wouldn't hurt to indulge in this moment - always with the hope in the back of his mind that he would be finished quickly enough so that the Polyjuice Potion wouldn't forfeit its effectiveness. For nothing in the world would he want to do it with Zabini himself.

Zabini raised his wand, and Draco followed the fingertips on the matte dark wood as they swished through the air, loosening his bonds. Once, he'd watched them bead sweat into goosebumps on pale skin as green eyes stared provocatively at him, and that brief moment of his well-buried past alone made a gasp prickle in his throat.

As the clasp around his arms loosened, releasing the flow of blood, his thoughts fluttered on in an unwelcome direction. _Amazing how well he copied Potter's wand._

Draco bit his lip and rose onto unsteady trembling legs, looking for anything inviting in Zabini's posture, anything prompting, as he had when they met three years before, but he merely sat there, waiting for what Draco would do.

As he staggered against him, Draco was finally able to shake off the knowledge that it was merely Zabini, merely an adversary demanding the unthinkable of him. His heated face met Potter's skin, his dry lips found the same rosy soft lips he had cursed so many times before. It was Potter's upper body that he pushed back with his own.

Draco could almost imagine that this was reality; that his counterpart was who he claimed to be, that he wanted him so badly that he would cheat, lie, act, and blackmail for it. And indeed, as if on top of everything else Zabini was trying to use his desire against him, he was performing entirely differently than Draco remembered. Although he should accept it gratefully, because it would make the show easier for him without question, he could not suppress the thought that the strange coincidences seemed to be accumulating.

Without breaking the one-sided stormy kiss, he pressed Potter into an embrace before letting his hands travel down the length of his back.

Potter shuddered, and for a split second Draco thought that he finally had succeeded in stirring the desire that he had eventually been blackmailed for. Encouraged, he dropped down and ran his hands over Potter's firm buttocks so that he could rub his throbbing groin up against him. When he suddenly tightened his grip, Zabini did something completely out of character: he moaned loudly and began to return the kiss.

It was a sound Draco would never want to forget. Rough in excitement, goosebump-inducing; the kind that simultaneously brought one to the brink of climax and urged one to cast a binding spell to never be without it again - even if it cost him his soul.

But it didn't fit into this situation.

With a regret that resonated bitterly in his gut, Draco yanked his head back and took a step away. He caught Potter's red-kissed lips, his rapt gaze behind the fogged lenses of his glasses, the visible rise and fall of his slender chest beneath the cloak, the color of which on any body but this one would be tantamount to an optical castration of the viewer. Only slowly did the thoughts return, bringing doubts that tormented him.

Zabini would never have given in like this. He was a puppet master, using his hands to thread his counterpart into a stuffy, dull listlessness, making them dance in an outrageous way that cost the victim not only all dignity, but also all his secrets.

As Potter shook his head, as if to awaken from a daze, a clock chimed somewhere in the depths of the house. The sound was the same one he had heard after Potter had burst into the kitchen.

Instead of transforming into Zabini, Potter nervously tugged his glasses off his gradually reddening nose and began frantically cleaning them on the hem of his sleeve. The sight of this familiar gesture alone sent a jolt to his stomach - and then Potter opened his mouth.

"Did you... ever thought of pressing charges against Zabini?" he muttered, glancing away to the side. "Coercion is a crime, Malfoy, just like blackmail."

Draco stared at him, and despite the fact that Potter, with a little gumption, would now come up with his biggest secret all by himself, all he could think of was that he had returned his kiss.


	4. Chapter 4

It took a while before they looked at each other again, and during this time Draco stepped onto a dark, if well-trodden, path of torture and ignorance. His heart was pounding painfully against his ribs, panic was driving sweat into his forehead but he could not move. He had to see Potter's face distort once he understood what the all-pervading truth behind this damn game was.

Disgust. Horror. A pinch of pity. What would it be like to be looked at by Potter as if he were a nightmare, poured into muscles, sinews and flesh?

_He kissed back._   
_Then why doesn't he look at me?_

Potter still wiped those ugly glasses and kept his gaze down. The raven-black hair covered his face, only his reddened nose was sticking out, and Draco wished he would finally look up, at least as much as he hoped it would never happen.

There was still the possibility that they would just keep fighting. Wasn't the clash in anger and poison better than none at all? Often enough, Draco had cursed himself for the talent of always saying the worst when he meant the best. Now it would save him from the cruel wait to stifle his wretched heart.

He closed his eyes for a second, took a deep breath, ordered his thoughts.

"That's right, Potter. Haressment is a crime. Are you really this limited that you don't know when you're delinquent yourself?" Draco spat and tried to grimace in anger. It became a painful grimace, though he suspected his counterpart would not know the difference.

But Potter didn't even look up; the slender fingers stopped wiping the lenses, but nothing else happened. Was it possible that his awful words had gone unheard?

Suddenly, Draco felt as if time was expanding around them, taking in more of the atmosphere with every passing second until the air became too thick to breathe. His fingers cramped around his forearm and he was desperately looking for a way out of this hell.

Both Draco and Potter flinched when an audible crunch sounded just outside the door.

It was one of the sounds that had taught him to fear this house, and Draco waited for swirling thoughts that would make it impossible for him to escape or even to defend himself, for the booming panic that would rob him of his ability to breathe, but this time, nothing but astonishment came over him; that he had actually not imagined these strange acoustic phenomena - after all this time of not wanting to believe his own ears.

Potter had been tense even before he had lifted his head. He shot Draco an intense look and lifted his finger to his lips, his wand pointed at the servant's chamber. With the other hand, he waved wildly, probably to signify Draco keep standing there.

His mouth seemed to form silent incantations as Potter turned away and took a step towards the door. Thick, light gray mist poured out of the tip of his wand and slowly sank to the ground before it waved forward inertly. Surrounding the door, it seemed to glow ghostly in the darkness of the servant's room.

Fascinated, Draco watched as the cloud like a matted blanket crawled across the floor and split at a table leg. This spell was unknown to him, but the effect became clear as the fog filled the entire room and snuggled up around every object. It would mark an intruder whether he was invisible or not.

In this case the chamber was empty except for the orphaned furniture.

Potter stepped outside, walking silently through the fog. He didn't look back to see if Draco was following him - probably his request was still valid at that point. A moment later, he was swallowed by the darkness and the fog closed behind him.

Once again his heart began to race, because despite the cool ceiling light the kitchen suddenly seemed dark. The smell of mold penetrated his nose, and he could only breathe shallowly, as if Potter had taken the oxygen Draco needed with him.

This is his own house. He certainly could not and will not leave Potter alone.

Shaking, he grabbed his wand, still glowing on the kitchen countertop, then turned back to the servants' quarters. The first step was the hardest. The seconds (or maybe already minutes or even more?) in the kitchen had sapped his strength but the relief dispelled the heaviness of his limbs as he followed Potter into the heart of the house. Potter had already made it into the hallway and stood frozen in front of a dresser, obviously indecisive. The fog piled up at chest height in front of the entrance door as if a thundercloud was rolling against it.

As Draco stood beside him, Potter rolled his eyes, illuminated by his silvery spell. On the edge, Draco wondered when he had turned off the lights in the hallway. Did he lit them at all?

"I should have known you wouldn't wait until the coast was clear," Potter moaned. There was nothing in his posture to suggest disgust or horror.

As his heartbeat gradually calmed and the panic pumped from his veins, Draco wondered if it was possible that Potter was such a good actor. In the kitchen, he had pretended to be Zabini, probably to find out what had happened behind the scenes and what lurked behind Draco's mistrust. No point in denying it; Draco was fooled by his play.

"If you think I'm going to let you sneak around here alone and stick your nose in my business, you are mistaken, Potter," Draco said weakly.

Potter pulled a face. "As if I needed something like that. Is there any business of yours here, Malfoy? The house is so run-down, even I wouldn't want to live here without a thorough cleaning." He paused for a moment, looking at Draco with eyebrows raised. "Anyway, I need to know if there are any secret doors or anything. What about the second floor and the attic? Are there ways to get to them quickly and easily?"

Of course, he first had to rule out simple burglars. "And why don't you use spells that tell you if someone has entered the house without permission? Except your humble self, of course," nagged Draco. Although he had struck a tone of voice that no one could misinterpret, Potter grinned boorishly and made Draco's heart flutter.

"Oh, I did that. Now we are looking for an evildoer who... well, who might belong to the inventory," he replied slowly, frowning as his gaze glided across the paintings. "So how is the rest of the house built?"

This almost friendly exchange of words made the hope that Potter would not hold the events against him swell up like a balloon in Draco's chest. Clearing his throat, he looked down at the dark mop of hair, regarding the impossible to tame hair whirl, without Potter taking any notice. "The first floor, including the attic, is sealed off according to my parents, but there's a strange machine at the other end of the hall that goes down to the basement, if I'm not mistaken."

Potter looked up at Draco with a straight face. "Would you wait here until I've checked the seal is still intact?"

"No," Draco replied hastily, trying hard to suppress the feeling of having to justify himself.

"All right." Without another word, without hesitation, Potter turned away, pushed past Draco to the back of the hallway, where the aforementioned apparatus stared out of the wall like a dark hole, and from which, on the left-hand side, the worn wooden panels of the floor turned into a broad staircase leading to a blocked passage to the second floor.

"An old freight elevator," cried Potter and seemed to rejoice as he hurried towards it. His fingers stroked over the fading, dark green-painted iron bars, which were enclosed in a tightly woven golden grid. In between, a glimpse of two now dusty benches, each firmly attached to the floor of the chamber, could be caught.

When Muggles moved around with such a thing, they were even crazier than Draco thought.

Potter nested at the grille door but could not get anything other than a rattling sound out of the dark device. "It is completely rusted, parts of it look as if they were... melted. No one has driven this thing for ages," he said cheerfully. "Funny I didn't notice it when I came in."

"I didn't think about it either. The light never gets to this place," whispered Draco. All of a sudden it seemed to him that the so-called freight elevator was a crucial detail in their search for the spook. The glow of the fog illuminated the metal skeleton in a stunning way, and Draco could hardly take his eyes off the gray shreds dripping into the gaps between the ground and impenetrable darkness.

"Do you hear that, too?" whispered Potter. Quivering with obvious excitement, he put his hands behind his ears, and at that very moment it became clear what he meant, for it suddenly intensified.

It was a roar coming from the dark duct below the freight elevator.

Fear pounded down Draco's throat again as he muffledly said, "I hope this doesn't mean we have to go down there." In his head, an image pushed itself into the foreground; Draco, how he would die in Potter's arms, trembling, drawing his last breath, while the shadows of the house already prepare to consume his corpse.

A shaky smile lay on his face. That he even imagined such a thing could mean either that he was slowly going crazy - or that he had come closer to the secret of the townhouse.

He surely could have done without that.

" _Reparo_ ", whispered Potter and gently slashed with the wand at a rusty spot at chest height of the grid.

Draco wanted to shout at him to let it go, wanted to shake him until he came to his senses, but the horror had paralyzed his body. There was nothing he could do but wait to see what monster would rise out of nowhere when the rusted grids could be pushed aside.

No question Potter would be so damn stupid to go in if he got the chance. Luckily, his spell didn't seem to do anything. Probably a single spell didn't work against this amount of rust and oblivion.

"That's bad luck, then. We should both get out of here," Draco croaked without thinking about how timid his words would sound. "Both of us." He took a step back.

Potter stood with his forehead leaning against the metal bars, his fingers interlocked in the grid above his head. He looked like a boy pressing his face against the window of a candy store, lusting for what the glass pane separated him from - and for a permission to explore it.

He won't give up.

"I'm sorry, Malfoy," he mumbled. "I shouldn't have pushed you like that earlier. Actually, I just wanted to -"

Potter interrupted himself, and Draco became dizzy under the meaning of his words. Of course, he could reply a number of things, from accusing him of having no business going into Draco's house until he officially explained what his mission was; to the fact that he had entered illegally; to the reminder that he had not only harassed him, but also tied him up and threatened him.

In the past, he had always been so talented at riding on other people's mistakes but on that day, staring at Potter's slender back, wrapped in a powerful spell that connected everything on this floor, it no longer seemed important to him.

If he hadn't invaded here, hadn't tied Draco up, he would never have known what it was like to hold the real Potter in his arms.

"My instructor did not send me here," Potter continued his apology and sighed. Although the sentence echoed empty and meaningless in Draco's head, he continued speaking. "The files clearly stated that it was _your_ house. The Ministry had the title deed. But Mr. Malfoy burst in and demanded the return of this very deed, so I stole it because... I thought it was important. Well, actually, he was pushy and absolutely hideous to Heather at the reception. I, um... I just didn't want to grant him the chance to get what he wanted. I'm sorry that I was so... It was just like back then in school all of a sudden."

Draco's heart gave out on a beat. The fact that Potter did such a thing, out of a simple, albeit snotty mood, was not as shocking to him as it would have been half a day ago. After all he had done to Draco, he was no longer surprised. What amazed him was that he had saved him without knowing or wanting to. _Again_.

"Without the spell on the title deed, Father cannot enter here," Draco said tonelessly.

"I've already used it." Potter took a deep breath and then turned around, still holding on to the grid. "Shall I hand the deed over to him? Even as an Auror I actually have to wait for the owner's permission during such investigations." His cheeks turned pale pink, and he leaned seemingly casually with his back against the elevator.

Draco felt the corners of his mouth forming a grin, the cheerfulness of which slowly reached his chest. "Don't you dare, Potter. I certainly don't want to see him again so soon, especially not in my house."

The smile on Potter's face seemed honest. "I put the deed in the bowl with that Muggle mermaid by the door. How do I get into the cellar?"

The change of subject met Draco unprepared, and he knew that his confusion could be read on his face. Of course, Potter didn't let go of that basement. It was his true nature. It was what had made him chase after Draco in their sixth year of school. Draco had aroused his curiosity and the urge to prove he wasn't wrong - a trait they shared; though they differed fundamentally in how far they were willing to go to get their questions answered.

It was with regret that Draco decided to answer truthfully and to stop hitting the hooks. "I never found any stairs."

Potter looked over his shoulder and peered intently into the dark void of the chamber. "Then the freight elevator is the only way. Help me fix it."

An ice-cold hand seemed to stroke down his neck, and Draco shook his head numbly. "Never. I'm not insane," he pushed out and, surprised by the vehemence of his dislike, took a step back. "I'm not going to help you clear the way for that thing in the cellar! You don't even know what it is!"

Potter didn't bat an eyelid. "I have a vague notion." He pushed himself leisurely off the bars and slowly approached Draco, never taking his eyes off him. As he walked, his fingertips brushed across the furniture as if he was admiring the dexterity of the builders, but it seemed lurking as he stared into Draco's eyes, diving for an answer to a question Draco himself would not know.

When he had reached him and had to look up to gaze into Draco's face, the gap between their bodies seemed to shrink. Potter stretched out his back and reached out to meet him and if Draco looked down, if there was enough space between them to see anything, he could have seen Potter tiptoeing.

Then his lips met Draco's, plucked at his cool skin, and warm breath made the hairs on his cheeks stand up.

"Help me fix the elevator, Malfoy," Potter whispered against his mouth and Draco closed his eyes, unable to resist.


	5. Chapter 5

Draco had undoubtedly underestimated how eager Potter was for a new adventure, and he had to admit that he was more cunning than he himself had expected him to be even after that afternoon. Still, the doubt could not be entirely banished; it seemed strange to him that Potter would resort to such means, merely to bridge his barely disguised boredom.

Though he did not return the kiss, had, in fact, barely moved from fright, from a budding longing for more, and because he feared that a twitch of his muscles, however imperceptible, might shatter this seemingly unreal transgression, Potter drove him into a frenzy beyond his previous sexual experience.

Potter's tongue painted a burning path on his lips, which he blurred again with his kiss, and as Draco wondered how to bear it, how to live with the fact that something so tender could trigger a desire to grind against the other body and tear his clothes, Potter began tugging at Draco's lower lip with his teeth. Each touch in itself triggered a heated throbbing inside him, only to connect there and make him burn up in their power to the fullest.

Like Potter, he almost closed his eyes to drown in the engulfing sensation, but the perfection of Potter's blurry face so close to his own forced him to look and take in as much of the moment as he was capable of. Draco's breath came in jerks, and his stomach tightened as he gazed at the long, black lashes. Torn, he wondered if the wizarding world was even aware that Potter wasn't just their savior; he was a demon lurking beneath the kind, benevolent facade, tearing anyone who fell for it into a thousand deaths of rapture and devotion; weaving a magical spell just by the excruciatingly ravishing shade of red of the smooth skin of his cheeks or the mesmerizing curve of his surprisingly soft lips, and he wished he could see them move on his mouth and invisible sparks of arousal streak across it; just so he could truly believe it.

As he watched the green eyes gradually open, his heart stopped for a cruel moment, knowing that it would be over as soon as Potter saw clearly, as soon as he recognized Draco's face because how else was such magic possible than that he had forgotten where he was and whom he was kissing? Finally, something like this had to have happened; in their frenzy, the glowing mists of the spell had dissipated.

Indeed, Potter winced noticeably at his lips, as if he had awakened from a dream, pulled his head back, sank back down on his heels, and quivered. Then he waved his wand and flashed the light in the blinding globe-shaped lamps on the walls before looking at Draco. There was an openly curious expression on his flushed face, and Draco could have sworn the corners of his mouth lifted, ever so slightly, almost imperceptibly, as if it pleased Potter that he had cut a swath of devastation through his mind, but all too quickly the expression vanished again.

"Help me fix the elevator," Potter said softly, so that he barely managed to drown out the racing pulse in Draco's ears.

In Draco's family, this would have been considered weak style; such an obvious act of bribery would have been laughed at mercilessly, but in his chest a chilling current of fear stirred into excitement. How could he possibly stand firm, prevent himself from succumbing to the spell and agreeing against his will? How could he fight a battle that he would lose with certainty?

Draco wanted to say no and opened his mouth, but instead a question dripped out that had the power to shatter the fragile intimacy - albeit created by calculation - between them to pieces all at once. "How can you kiss me just to get into this cursed basement?"

In retrospect, Draco would have liked to bite his tongue if it would have undone his insanity.

Potters, however, smiled indulgently and placed his fingertips on Draco's cheek. "Oh, Malfoy. Can't you guess that I fell head over heels for you when you called me Zabini and pushed yourself against me?" With a feigned sigh, he brushed a strand of Draco's hair behind his heated ear.

The taunting words burned like poison in Draco's stomach. His jaw tightened. "Cut the crap!" shouted Draco fiercely, and Potter winced, jerking his hand back and leaving a trail of rapidly cooling embers on his skin.

"It's alright. I won't touch you again," Potter said sternly, taking a few steps aside to lean against a yellowed doorframe as if to guard the entrance to the drawing room.

"That's not what - I didn't mean that -" Biting his lower lip, rubbing over the marks of Potter's teeth, he tried to remember who he was. Draco Malfoy, a man who, despite all his insecurities, despite his discord with his own parents, had nevertheless undergone some basic training; a man who had learned to cope with such disappointments without letting them show, surely had to have some way of pulling himself together!

He took a deep breath, as if he could dilute the pain with oxygen until it dissipated, and said, "Maybe I'll reconsider and help you lose your life in this cellar, if you want it so badly. But only if you finally tell me what a pitiful game you're playing here." Contrary to his hope to give himself a somewhat serious appearance, his voice quivered and a croaking dissonance had settled in the words.

"I'm not playing a game. If you think I've been disguising my true motives, you're wrong," Potter countered with a grin, playfully wrapping a lock of hair around his index finger, seemingly unfazed by Draco's prompting. "I wanted to get into your house, so I stole the deed and used the spell. And now I want to get into your basement to see what's hiding there, so I want to get this elevator going." He wore the appearance of having to think hard. "Unless you demand that I blow up the floor. Quite possible, but certainly no less dangerous for you, Malfoy."

"Why don't you just leave me alone?" groaned Draco, running both hands through his hair, wedging his fingers in his strands. "What do you get out of tormenting me over this basement?"

Potter hung his head so that his face was once again in shadow. "I can't." He fiddled busily with the tight stand-up collar of his cloak until he found a button, which he deftly opened with the fingers of one hand. As he stroked down along the seam to undo more buttons, Draco tried to keep his eyes fixed on his tousled mop of hair.

_This won't work again_ , he thought tensely. _Now that I know Potter knows he can get me around with his attraction, I'm certainly not going to fall for it again._

"And why not? Why can't you just go away and spare me from your madness?" Draco stared laboriously at the nearly white skin of Potter's scalp without blinking, because blinking meant breaking eye contact with his vanishing point and instinctively looking to see what Potter's purpose in his actions might be - as if it wasn't perfectly clear. No, he would merely be exposing himself to that allure, and he wouldn't be able to stand it.

Without looking up, Potter began to laugh, deep and rumbling like a panther in a cage, and Draco shuddered involuntarily. Out of the corner of his eye, he vaguely saw the lime green melting from Potter's shoulders. Still, he winced and drew in a gasping breath as the cloak hit the floor with a loud audible thump.

_It's not wise to sacrifice your energy in a fight you cannot win._

"Because it's important to get to the basement, Malfoy. I don't know why, but it just is." At last Potter raised his head, made sure Draco was looking at him, then ran his hand through his hair, deliberately, it seemed, for by this movement he drew attention to his arm, his shoulders, his armpit; to the fact that his upper body was naked. A nerve on Draco's cheek began to twitch, and he dug his fingernails into his palm to keep himself from letting his gaze slide down the length of his neck, giving himself up.

"An Auror Cloak like that is heavier than it looks, isn't it? All the protective spells woven into the fibers would be quite enough, you'd think," Potter said lightly, demonstratively pulling his lower lip between his teeth as if to entice Draco to reach out and free it. "Look how it cuts into the skin."

Draco snorted, and gradually the pressure of his self-control seemed to pull his knees to the floor; his legs were already beginning to shake. He squinted his eyes, lest he give in after all to the almost overpowering desire to listen to the seductive voice and simply toss his mind to the baser instincts that were raging within him.

A bright laugh. "Why do you resist this much? Your efforts are in vain. You know that; and haven't you seen all that you're trying so desperately to block out just now, anyway?"

"But that wasn't really you," Draco murmured devotedly. When it came to maintaining complete self-control, he had always been lost. Fear, lust, or even just the joy of provoking, all of these had often usurped dominance in Draco's life, and now it was imperative to let at least a little pressure out of the cauldron, or he couldn't guarantee anything.

Potter didn't seem to suspect what really lay behind this unfortunate affair with Zabini.

Unwelcome images swirled in his mind, stirred up by his sheer fear of what Potter might say in return. Images of Potter lying beneath him, the oddly fitting white shirt torn from the slender body like wrapping paper; mouth agape in astonishment; eyes dark with fear and excitement behind the slipped glasses.

These were snapshots that had imprinted themselves irremovably in his brain and haunted him as if they had been key scenes in his life so far; and by Merlin's snake, in a way, they were. They always carried the wretched feeling of surrender, but at the same time they were riddled with guilt. He had given in to Zabini's lures without a moment's hesitation.

Afterwards, he had noticed details that should have stopped him immediately, even in his temporary insanity: socks in the wrong color, with a monogram to boot. The fine fabric of the shirt that seemed tailored to his body. The languid smile with which he let Draco's madness befall him.

How ashamed he had been when Potter became Zabini underneath of him! He had felt soiled, cruelly deceived, and yet he had complied with the demands with which Zabini had since stepped before him, without thinking about it or planning a liberating blow. In the end, this libelous episode would also have damaged Zabini's reputation had it ever come out in the open, and there had simply been no reason to panic.

That, at least, was what he told himself.

But the fact that it had been just Zabini trying to extort a few personal benefits had relieved him, mainly because he would never have forgiven himself if he had desecrated the real Potter in this menial way, using him for his own pleasure as if he meant nothing to Draco.

This time, too, the images stirred the ugly imprints of long-past torment, and the tears were already burning behind his pinched eyelids when Potter confronted him with the certainty that the only positive thing about Draco's act was nothing but imagination; that Potter was far from pure and innocent.

In his desperation, he hadn't noticed that Potter had moved closer again. A tug at Draco's suit trousers, tentative at first, seeming almost accidental; Potter's breath on his neck; then the whir of the zipper. A warm hand brushing his pants off his hips.

If it had stayed at that, Draco would have dismissed it as curiosity. Potter had undressed him; so what? He had, after all, practically dared him to; leaning against him in the kitchen. He would have gotten dressed, called Potter a faggot (or something similarly fatuous, considering that it was Draco himself who had rubbed up against him), and forgotten about it.

Holding his breath tensely so that Potter's scent, which must have been tamed by the thick cloak, didn't tingle his nose and stifle his intentions, he waited for the hand nibbling at his underpants to disappear so he could bend down to pull his pants around his ankles back on.

Seconds later, Potter was squeezing his rock-hard penis and giggling when Draco's eyes snapped open in an instant. He felt his wand slip from his hand before it hit the floor with a clatter.

"Oh Malfoy, you really do have some juicy secrets, but you should learn to defend them better already," he murmured darkly.


	6. Chapter 6

Although Potter's groping, teasing touches shot through him like lightning, and the skin inside his mouth became dry and brittle like paper as a gasp dripped from his lips, his pain desaturated the colors of the world around him.

Draco didn't dare look at him; he was sure it would cost him his sanity to watch the thin fingers from his dreams stroke his penis in the harsh reality - most of all, he didn't dare bear Potter's expression while he did so. How would he look? Aroused or even disgusted by himself? Draco kept his gaze glued to the mould stains between the ceiling and the wallpaper.

He wanted to shove Potter away from him screaming, curse him, smash the truth at him with relish (You still don't suspect it? I love you, you idiot, I love you, and if you don't stop this right now, you'll never get rid of me), but instead he stretched his body towards the warm hand as if his fingertips were releasing sensations on his skin that he actually wanted to feel.

How betrayed he felt by his own body, his own lust! That's exactly how it had been when Zabini had wriggled in front of him, in his transformed body, his true intentions poorly hidden behind the wrong lenses. And just like then, something primeval controlled his reactions and banished his own consciousness to the back of the grandstand, unable to do anything about the stirring spectacle.

But even the agonized cries in his head were gradually silenced as Potter let his hand slide down the shaft deeper, circling the tip; despite the fucking embarrassment, the feeling was quivering and engrossing and one of a kind in its uniqueness, and every inch of skin on his body became hot, even though he was standing half-naked in what was actually an uninhabited house, surrounded by cold air enriched with years of muff. He was nothing more than this audible throbbing of his bloodstream, nothing more than this river of fire that ran through his flesh and scorched his resistance, nothing more than this delicious hand that tore down his walls in a laughably paradoxical way.

Without further hesitation, his gaze slipped from the striped wallpaper to Potter; and suddenly he no longer knew what he had feared to see, for there was nothing about it that could even be traced back to a nightmare. Potter did not look at him. The hazy gaze focused on the action of his own hand, his teeth buried in his lower lip, he looked as if this was a more pleasurable part of his secret plan, and a painful lump formed in Draco's throat.

He had not been prepared for Potter to suddenly look up. The blush on his cheeks had long since descended to his chest, perhaps even deeper, but Draco didn't dare to follow the trail because something in the fleeting seconds that had passed since he had looked up unexpectedly had frozen Potter's hand in their movement. Confused, Potter frowned and retreated, taking a step back, letting the cold air flow into the space between their bodies.

Draco had no doubt been tormented by Potter using his easy excitability to push him past the point where his consent would have mattered, but now he couldn't tell if it wasn't disappointment that made the lava in his veins cool.

Potter put his fingers to his lips, his indistinct gaze sliding to the ground. "I've gone too far," he murmured muffled, and suddenly a clear hint of panic flew into his face. "I didn't want this, Malfoy! At least not like this, not that - Why didn't you say I -"

Draco was aware that Potter had noticeably gone beyond everything that made him what he was; that Potter was just as shocked by himself - and Draco had actually wanted to watch him tear himself apart, questioning his morals and apologizing, but an unexpected spark had ignited in his chest and interrupted him. "Oh no, you're not going to blame this on me, Potter! I have said it; a thousand times I have said that you should go, that you should leave me alone," he yapped. It did incredibly well, and a small part of the tension seemed to dissolve into his anger, so he kept going. "You're so incredibly arrogant, thinking you can break into my house and attack me for fun, thinking I have to like your fumbling too! I can't imagine anyone in the world as incredibly limited as you!"

Potter flinched several times while Draco shouted his desperate contempt at him, but that didn't soothe him, couldn't, wasn't allowed to soothe him, because if he didn't finally shift the responsibility for his suffering away from himself now, he would never truly breathe again, always wondering how he could have done any better. And what he could have done to finally be happy in Potter's arms. Because at that moment he knew that this was what it would always be all about; how could he have turned this unique opportunity for sex around to bind Potter to himself - an undoubtedly pointless undertaking.

Then it would be him who was tearing himself to pieces, and in what world would that be fair?

Potter pulled the glasses off his nose and hesitated. Apparently he had wanted to clean them on his sleeve, as he so often did, forgetting that his cloak lay on the floor as an ugly, lime-green puddle. Without putting them back on, he pulled his eyebrows together. "There's no excuse for that," he said roughly, and without Draco wanting it, this strangely rousing sound created goose bumps on his back. "There is none and there never will be. God, how can one make so many unforgivable mistakes in a single day?" He closed his eyes in agony and sighed tremulously.

In the clammy hope of being able to keep up his anger a little longer (his performance so far seemed ridiculous to him; could his understanding really be gained so quickly with a little whining?), Draco bent down to pull up his pants, but above all to break eye contact with Potter's heartbreaking face.

"And what was the point of all this? What were you planning to do in that stupid basement?" cried Draco, but his voice had already lost its rage. If he was honest with himself, he had to admit to himself that he had forgiven crossing his boundaries the very moment Potter had called his mistakes unforgivable. It felt like an act of silent rebellion against everything Potter said.

Well, at least he could try to take advantage of Potter's bad conscience to finally find out to what circumstance this whole circus was owed.

"I really don't know," Potter replied mattely and put the glasses on the antique dresser next to him before burying his head in the palms of his hands. "There's something extremely important in that basement, but -"

Suddenly something seemed to snap into Draco's head. It was just a tiny piece that the mechanism of understanding had been missing, but now the apparatus started to work inexorably and suddenly he knew what question to ask. "You didn't by any chance consume a potion at some point - say this morning or even at noon?"

Potter shivered. Without taking his hands out of his face, he nodded. "I did. But that's no excuse for something like that. I mean, why isn't this damn potion forbidden if you can't control your actions anymore? The worst thing is that even after the effects wear off, I still -"

Draco twisted his eyes. "Spare me your whining!" His eyes glided across Potter's bowed form. Thoughts raced through his mind. "What was the potion?"

Hands flowed down Potter's face, revealing his horrified expression. He swallowed several times, and it was quite obvious that Draco had asked a question he did not want to answer. Draco watched him intently, trying to capture every movement, while Potter was obviously torn between the desire to explain his mistakes and to keep his secret.

"Go on," growled Draco. "How bad can the answer be?" To shield his heart from excitement, he crossed his arms in front of his chest.

"Was the question serious?" Obviously, Potter didn't expect Draco to say anything, because he went on immediately: "It was Felix Felicis."

The sound of these words ran warmly like liquid hope through Draco's withered heart.

"That's why you wouldn't admit it," whispered Draco. "A potion of happiness telling you to put your hands inside my pants -"

"No, Malfoy, you don't understand -" Potter interrupted him and involuntarily rubbed his bright red ears, which shone out of the thick black hair.

"Then say it, goddamn it! What is it now? What is it that I don't understand?" From effort not to approach Potter and to bury his fingers in his hair; to shake him until the truth slipped out of him, he clawed his fingers into the sleeves of his shirt.

The tension drained from Potter's shoulders and his hands clapped uselessly against the narrow hips. Draco, who had followed the movement involuntarily, shuddered as his gaze caught all that he should never have seen for his own sake. He shook his head slightly, but now the sight of the rosy nipples, erect in the cold; the stripe of dark hair that ran down from the chest to above the belly like an irresistible path, and the flat navel that made the tip of his tongue tingle, would no longer be banished from his mind.

"It - the potion - stopped working while I was kissing you. And because I thought my target was in that basement, I just... kept trying to get in."

"Perhaps it's true," Draco said soundlessly.

Of course, there was a wild hope bubbling up inside him; one that shouted out to him that there was a great chance his wishes would come true, whatever he did - and that if, as so often, they didn't come true in the end, it would hollow him out and leave him bleeding to death on the shards of his shattered heart.

Would it not be possible that he himself, Draco Malfoy, had been the target of Potter's lucky potion?

Draco picked up his wand from the ground, then walked past Potter and headed for the freight elevator. Now it was no longer his life at stake; no longer the fear of whatever was lurking in the darkness of the old house. By now, Draco would have been fine if that something tore his head off, because it couldn't be worse than what Potter had done.

Back then, when he had discovered that he had to fall in love with Potter of all people, the hopelessness had spread in him and from then on accompanied him as dead weight in his heart. He had learned to live with it, because there had never been a signal, no matter how tiny, with which he could have deceived himself. The fact that his infatuation was so intense and constant was considered bad luck - only the cruel abuse on the part of Zabini had mixed real bitterness into the gloomy mood of his existence.

Today, Potter had not only stirred his self-control, but had also shattered the hibernation of all that could destroy him inwardly to a thousand shards.

Hands trembling, he pointed the wand at the grating and paused when he recognized the traces of Potter's hands in the dust deposits. He glanced over the lock's mechanism. Contrary to what he had thought, the struts were not rusted together, but rather fused together where they should have been separated. Obviously an act of sabotage, but so precise that it could only have been a wizard or a witch. Either one of the former inhabitants had wanted to protect the following generations from what was lurking down there, or his parents had blocked access out of sheer contempt for any Muggle technology.

In the end it did not matter. "Sana Porta," muttered Draco.

As if in slow motion, both grains of dust and shreds of rust floated in the air and enveloped the device like a dome, while the magic continued its work. Drop by drop, the molten iron pushed itself back to its place of origin. Though Draco had never intended to cast this spell in such a house, he paused and watched as the elevator restored itself.

Potter had stepped beside him. "I did not know this spell. I thought we had to work together -"

"Reparo may be enough with your glasses, but you can't seriously believe you can wipe out all magical damage with it," snapped Draco. Out of the corner of his eye he saw that Potter had put his unspeakable cloak back on and breathed out in relief.

To keep himself occupied and to suppress the throbbing feeling that he had just given up his last chance to ever get along with Potter, Draco stretched out his fingers and wedged them with the cool metal grid. With a jerk, he pulled it aside; it gave way with a loud clatter and opened the entrance.

The chamber inside the vehicle lay before them in the semi-darkness, breathing an atmosphere of dead, dried-up history and murky danger.

"Be my guest, Potter," Draco murmured and stepped aside, ignoring the goose bumps on his arms.


	7. Chapter 7

There weren't many things Draco had been as certain of as the fact that Harry Potter would never hesitate when it came to putting himself in danger. Although this knowledge was also part of a spate of beliefs falsified that very day, such as 'Harry Potter would never touch a Slytherin with pliers' and 'The only really erotic thing about him is his small, round bottom', it was still the most logical of the three assumptions. On closer inspection he could have erased the other two much earlier.

First: Potter had dedicated himself to the fight against the conviction of Severus Snape. After all, he had appeared in court and had made a passionate plea about how quickly the entire population of the wizarding world pointed their fingers at anything that did not reveal every one of its secrets at first glance. This made him a great defender of a well-known Slytherin, and the fact that he had casually described the selection process of the Sorting Hat as irrelevant and the division of students into houses in general as outdated, allowed only the conclusion that he was least interested in the imaginary crest on a man's chest.

Second, Draco had never seen Potter like this; aroused and panting, the red welts of excitement burned deep into his skin, the pink lower lip pierced by incisors, the blurred look in the cloudy green eyes directed at him. It had completely convinced him that there was nothing erotic about Potter, but that he himself was made of the stuff that would haunt Draco into his dreams and harden his penis at the most inopportune moments.

And now Potter hesitated at the threshold of the elevator, destroying the third belief Draco had clung to until that moment, so that this nightmare might find a quick end. Still hoping that Potter would just want to adjust his glasses, he staggered back, dropped onto one of the steps of the staircase, ducked away under Potter's uncertain gaze.

"Draco," he said softly, as if this intimacy was some kind of apology; as if the fact that he was using his first name could take away the pain.

But it couldn't. Draco put his hands on his ears, ignoring dust and dirt on the palms, and thought that this gesture would be enough to show his unwillingness, because a new, booming nausea was spreading in his stomach and every word could, he feared, be accompanied by a gush of his breakfast. Nothing that he could have endured on such a day. He bit the inside of his cheeks and pressed harder against his skull.

Potter did not notice. "It was an insanely big, bloody, stupid mistake to just throw myself at you like that, kiss you and ...well, grope you in a way I just can't believe -"

With his fingernails drilled into the scalp around his ears, Draco flinched, and an unconscious sadness flooded into his chest, making him feel like he was going to start crying and puking any moment if Potter didn't leave immediately. "Now shut your mouth," yelled Draco. "Just once in your shitty life! Get the fuck out of here!"

A roaring silence accompanied the fading of his words. Through a tiny crack between his squinched eyelids, Draco watched Potter squirm uneasily before stepping over the dark threshold of the elevator without another word. He nested at a lever and pushed it to the side until it stopped, not bothering to close the rickety iron gate. With a shrieking sound that seemed to cut through the loud beating of Draco's racing heart, it set itself in motion.

Only when Potter's head disappeared into the ground did Draco take his hands off his ears. From somewhere, a protracted clattering sound echoed through the house.

Disturbance broke through the nausea in his stomach and a cool shiver ran down Draco's neck. Though a cautious silence had returned to the floor after the elevator had stopped, it was a waiting silence that would swallow every step, consume every word, a silence as on a battlefield when the noise of battle was faded, and one was the only living person to stand before a mountain of corpses, in the distance the beating of the crows' wings, flying to their gruesome feast.

Not good.

Slowly he leaned forward to look into the hall and held his breath. He couldn't see anything more unwelcome than his parents' conservative art collection, yet the restless feeling condensed into a premonition.

After all, did it matter that he would not see it coming?

In that moment, as he searched the shadows of the sculptures for signs of the horror that lay on his palms in cold sweat of fear, the lights flickered... and went out.

In the second between the flashing lights and complete darkness, Draco became more certain that it had been a terrible mistake to jostle Potter away. A murmur in his ears, he pulled his head back and blinked into the darkness.

Though panic was numb in him as it had once been when he had sat alone on this very staircase at night as a child and cried until his mother had come and comforted him, something else came to the fore.

If it disappears when Potter comes back, it never was really there.

Biting his teeth together, he clasped his wand with his trembling hand and took his panicky fear as given, just as he had once done with the grief over his misfortune in love; he slowly got up on his feet and stepped up to the gaping hole in the wall. He clasped his free hand around the banister of the stairs, then he stretched his head over the abyss.

"Potter," he whispered. A musty, stale smell penetrated his nose.

If he was in one of his nightmares, he could have screamed and rumbled, but Potter would never have let anyone hear a word from him again - he would have left him alone with what lived inside this walls. Draco's eyes watered in the effort to hold this cramped position, but he didn't give up.

"There's nothing down here," Potter suddenly shouted, so loud that Draco flinched. He sounded closer than Draco had expected. "I'll come back up, if I may."

"Pot- It's here, Potter! The lights went out suddenly, and -"

The loud, metallic screeching sounded again and Draco retreated by his trembling arm, let himself fall on his butt and waited. Wiping the tears from his cheeks in shame, he admitted to himself that he was glad not to be alone.

With a loud bang, the elevator stopped, the lights came back on and Draco saw in Potter's reddened, strangely distorted face. He knew he looked desperate, that fear had already dug itself under his eyes. The marks of his fingernails under his cheeks even hurt, but that was certainly no reason to look so agitated, and for a tiny moment, the fear tickles in his stomach again.

Potter rushed towards Draco and dropped to his knees before him. Shocked to see him at eye height so suddenly, Draco turned his head away.

After all he had gone through that day, his insides felt sore. There were no words left in him that didn't dissolve somewhere along the way in his mouth from the bitterness awakened by Potter in that cruel way; and anyway, there was no point in adding anything to it. He had already laid out his whole life before Potter, offering his secrets like the whore he had always been, in the light of day.

"There was never anyone or anything here. At least nothing but you, Draco," Potter murmured so close to his ear that he shivered as his warm breath brushed across Draco's earlobe. "The basement is empty except for a few rats and looted boxes. I suspected all along that it was your own chaotic energy that was spreading the spook." He kissed the last words on Draco's skin, and their meaning was almost lost in the murmur of the pulse.

"But how - What are you doing, Potter?" Draco pushed forward.

Instead of answering, Potter slid closer to Draco on his knees, over his outstretched legs, almost sitting on his lap. Then he raised one hand to the back of Draco's head, threaded his fingers through his hair and pressed his earlobe against heated lips, which parted and began to gently suck it in. Analogous to the lust that unexpectedly branched off through his body, a long, deep groan escaped him, driving a blush of shame on his cheeks.

This renewed impudence tore him to pieces once more; Potter must have been out of his mind if he thought Draco could summon up even a shred of self-control after all that happened that day. "If I were you," he gasped and tensed his arms, his fingernails scraping across the floor, "I'd leave that alone."

He wanted to add that he could not otherwise leave it at that, sitting idly, but then Potter actually paused and the words dissolved in his mouth.

"Don't push me away, Malfoy. If you knew what I was going to do to you...! Believe me, you'd regret it." The barely concealed threat that resonated in Potter's tone of voice wouldn't be needed because Draco had always known he would not have the strength to push him away again.

Instead, he raised his useless arms and grabbed Potter's ass with both hands. Something about it felt strange, different from what he had felt in the kitchen before, but Draco didn't have a chance to think about it because Potter moaned softly in his ear, slipped his lips down to Draco's neck and sucked himself in.

Now that Draco knew that it was Potter, that it was the scent of his hair that penetrated his nostrils, that it was himself who had bent over him, who accepted Draco's grip on the firm flesh of his buttocks, the sucking on his neck was something that erased any of Potter's past impertinence from his brain.

As he dragged Potter down, the horrible cloak stretched for only a second, and with a tug, the front button panel tore open. But Draco didn't care; Potter sat on him, the warmth of his body seeping into Draco's lap, forcing him to drag him even closer.

There was nothing left in this world now to stop him, to save his heart and soul. Draco had surrendered; long ago and completely.

Potter's crotch to his own felt closer than expected, and Draco guessed what Potter had done before he released his skin from the clasp of his hot lips to look down on him - and indeed. Sometime between exploring the basement and Potter's renewed approach, he had completely exposed himself under his cloak.

Suddenly, Draco's mouth seemed to dry out with lust. He did not dwell on the routine he had followed in each of his daydreams; the throbbing flesh of his member did not allow him the time to stroke his hands over the nipples that stretched out towards him like a seductive candy.

Forgetting himself, he bowed his head and licked over it, but as Potter moaned and his hips rubbed against his lap in a circular motion, his attention was lost in the dark curls of his pubic hair that framed the base of Potter's penis.

Draco had until that moment thought it was just a phrase ... that if one saw something particularly appetizing, one's mouth watered. Now, however, the saliva soaked his formerly dry mucosa, and Draco had to swallow, several times. It almost made him feel uncomfortable not to put his lips on the red tip, not to run his tongue along the veins that surrounded the shaft in an almost obscene, breathtaking way.

He helplessly dug his fingers into Potter's cloak, sucked himself up somewhere on his chest, rubbed himself hopelessly against the naked body, and watched as he pushed the penis against his hip with his own desperate movements. He slipped aside from Draco's shirt and suddenly Potter braced himself against his clasping hands.

Draco hardly had time to think that he had ruined it now, that Potter would now withdraw as he repositioned himself and pressed his erection into Draco's stomach once more. Meanwhile, he simply stripped the cloak from his shoulders and Draco's trembling hands found their way back to his heated skin, stroking, rubbing and kneading their way back to Potter's lap.

The touching of his member, seeing Potter's cock twitch as his fingertips felt for it, feeling the lechery throbbing under his skin, drove him to the edge of madness. The panting in his ear matched the beat of his caressing, getting deeper, more rumbling as Draco caught the penis and closed his fist around it.

Draco also began to moan, for the sight of the thick shaft protruding from his fist, the foreskin already completely retracted, a whitish drop emerging from the slit at the tip, was almost too much for him. He would have liked nothing better than to take it up with his tongue, to try it, and this time he didn't know what was holding him back anymore. "Stand up, Potter," he gasped against the damply breathed skin of Potter's chest.

Instead of answering, Potter thrust his fist as hard as he could and threw his head back into his neck and Draco couldn't help but turn his gaze away from the delicious penis and stare at him. He thrusted again, and now Draco could see the clouded eyes closing with lust, his mouth opening to a piercing sigh, and the redness spreading from his cheeks across his neck to his chest.

It was a ravishing sight, and just watching was no longer enough; it would never be enough. Draco squeezed the penis tighter and took the other hand to undo the button on his pants. "No," Potter moaned and thrust into Draco's fist. "No, let - let me do it -"

Shuddering, as if he had dipped into cold water, Potter pulled his dick out of Draco's clutches and crawled a few inches back. An unexpectedly violent feeling of loss made Draco reach out to grab it again, but Potter laughed shakily. "Wait. In a moment -"

Then he bent over, brought his lips close to the Draco's, and kissed him, so hungry, so demanding, that it tore his attention away from him, so Draco didn't even notice at first how Potter's fingers opened his pants. Draco tried to catch them with his hands but they escaped him in a flash and Potter giggled and breathed into her kiss: "I have something planned for you and there is nothing you can do to stop me. So I'm going to undress you now. But you can lie down on my cloak if you don't want to lie in the dirt -"

"Are you kidding, Potter?", Draco replied harshly, stuck his thumbs under the waistband of his underpants, pushed his hips slightly up and simply pulled his pants down. Then he tried to smile and demonstratively sat down in the dust with his bare bottom. "As if I would care, now of all times."

Potter did not answer. He stared at Draco's cock, the tip of which was already shining wet, reached out his hand involuntarily, and the sight alone was enough to make Draco's crotch contract. It would not have needed the touch, the coarse tugging at his penis that was so contrary to the almost careful groping earlier that Draco pressed his hands on Potter's hips and pulled him closer.

Contrary to his expectations, Potter no longer fought back, but wrapped his arms around him, pressed his body against Draco, spread kisses on his heated face, which he returned feverishly; but it was a trap. Only seconds later, Potter pulled Draco's arms from his chest, dragged them behind his back and held them there, wrists pressed together.

Draco could probably have easily freed himself - he still outdid Potter by a head length and had proportionately larger hands - but Potter dropped to his knees and grabbed Draco's penis with his free hand. He didn't rub it, but held it upwards.

Draco, who knew where this was going to lead, was dizzy with lust, but a tiny bit of fear mixed in. Potter, who positioned himself above him at that moment and pressed Draco's glans against his sphincter, certainly didn't know what he was about to do. He would hurt himself, tear himself apart, and hate Draco forever because it wouldn't take him a second to cum and mix his seed into Potter's blood.

"You can't -" Draco whispered and fell silent, for Potter chose this moment to drop himself with all his might onto Draco's lap.

Shouldn't he have screamed? Draco, at any rate, felt like screaming when his cock suddenly forced its way into the hot, wet confines of Potter's body and he had to hold on to himself, not to lift him up, to bump into him again, will-less as if caught by a dark spell. For a heartbreaking moment there was nothing but Potter's pulse encircling him, and he bit his teeth hard, fighting for control.

Potter made no sound and seemed to hold his breath, his face tense but not distorted in agony. Fingernails dug into the skin on Draco's wrists. It didn't hurt, but it made him wish Potter would dig as deep into his flesh as he could, so he wouldn't pour into his tight butt - so he could hold out, hold out, until Potter gave up this ridiculous attempt.

Draco glanced cautiously down at the unity of their bodies; he assumed that it was enough to see Potter's flaccid penis to drive the arousal out of him with one blow, but the opposite was true - Potter was harder than ever, so plump that Draco inevitably thought he was about to burst and empty his semen on his belly, quivering.

Before Draco knew what to do, Potter released his arms and pushed him back by the shoulder, leaving him no choice but to give in until his back was lying on the cold floorboards.

He was condemned to do nothing; if he moved now, even if only to push Potter away, it would just cause him more pain. With his hands clenched in a fist, he looked at Potter, seeking help, and flinched.

The sight of Potter drove a moaning up into Draco's chest; he looked down at him with a lascivious smile, his green eyes half closed, and Draco wanted to ask how he could still smile after such an action, how he could still be horny even though the pain would have to kill him, but only the dammed up moaning flowed out of his mouth. Worse, he forgot himself, leaned on the ground with his arms and drilled as deep into Potter as he could, and suddenly it was impossible for him to stop again - he pulled back to thrust again, and all his sensation was focused on his cock and how it pierced the tight muscle ring again and again to slide into the heat.

As he pulled his cock out a third time from the outrageously erotic body, Potter's lips parted in a cruel smile, and even that made Draco gasp and twitch at that moment. It was far too late for him; surely even a knife held to his neck would have increased his lust. He was just about to delve again inside him when Potter's hands forced his hips to the ground.

Doomed to remain motionless on the ground, Draco looked down at Potter's body. At that moment, a drop of lust detached itself from the bouncing, red tip and fell onto Draco's hip bone. "You better stay down or I'll get dressed and get out of here," he rumbled.

Shuddering, Draco quickly replied, "I'm so sorry I hurt you -"

"Shut your mouth, Malfoy. Look at me." He loosened the grip around Draco's hips and slowly let his hands flow upwards along the inside of his own thighs. One of them lingered at a distance from his cock, the other brushed outwards, past his buttocks and into the crevice, shoulders leaning slightly back.

Draco searched Potter's face for confirmation of what he now suspected: it wasn't about his first time with a guy; maybe it wasn't even about the sex itself.

He wanted to horrify Draco.

Potter returned his gaze with provocative serenity, then with a flowing movement he pushed the fingers of his hand as deep into himself as he could, and whatever Draco had expected, it was not that Potter closed his eyes with relish, groaning loudly and circling his hips.

Draco hastily leaned on his elbows and lifted his back a little off the ground. Not knowing where to look, he looked from Potter's face, which seemed to glow with excitement, down to his crotch, which he moved back and forth in a fast, hard rhythm, while at the same time thrusting his hand inside himself, and finally to his hard-on, from which precum was dripping at an ever faster pace.

Draco trembled with desire and he hoped he had interpreted the hint correctly, because if not, he would be lost forever. Hurriedly, he dropped back onto his back, tensed up and grabbed Potter's hips as fast as he could. He didn't take the time to look at Potter's face for the reaction to his plan, because that could ruin everything; instead, he rammed his knees into Potter's back in a single, flowing movement from behind. Defenseless, the fingers of one hand up his butt, the other hanging uselessly, he buried Draco underneath him and gasped.

Draco no longer hesitated and pushed the slender body aside, writhing out from under him. Potter, however, made no sound. He just let himself fall on his chest and balanced on his knees, stretching his backside towards him. He could see that Potter had fucked himself with three fingers before he started to push them back in, but Draco resolutely caught the hand and tossed it aside.

"Are you going to leave me here forever, Malfoy, or are you finally going to fuck me," Potter moaned and moved his butt slowly and tantalizingly, and Draco's dick responded, twitching noticeably.

Without making a conscious decision to do so, Draco grabbed Potter's butt and spread his cheeks, ran his fingertips down the crevice to the wet, shiny, widened hole that contracted with tension.

No blood was visible; and by now Draco no longer believed Potter was as inexperienced as he had previously thought. Presumably - and this thought made him gasp - Potter, after realizing that there was absolutely nothing to be found in the basement, had undressed and fingered himself, even prepared himself with lubricant. Maybe he had never intended to sleep with Draco, maybe he just wanted to cool off, and Draco had disturbed him.

Without warning, he poked a finger into the narrow anus, shivering under the deep groans of Potter and the sensation of the muscles contracting around him. "If you want to torture me with this -" Potter growled with pleasure and tried to reach out to the finger.

"I'll tell you what I'm actually going to do," Draco gasped and pulled back his hand.

Potter rumbled reluctantly and writhed on the floor as if he wanted to turn and stand up, but obviously he called himself to his senses and just put his cheek on his hand. As if Draco himself would last much longer.

Draco breathed shallowly, making sure Potter didn't notice him getting ready behind his back, holding his almost overstimulated throbbing glans in position above Potter's hole, and allowed himself to enjoy the disappointment on his sweet face for a few moments. _This is revenge for the fact that you just wanted to get into my basement and leave._

"What is it now? You wanted to tell me what you -"

Draco chose this moment to drive himself deep into Potter's body with a single thrust. Both moaned loudly and Draco's fingers pierced Potter's hip while he took the brutal blow with his firm cheeks.

Potter's already tight hole contracted around his dick, and Draco waited as long as he could bring himself to until he circled his hips to irritate him. Only to find that Potter was not provoked. He pulled back, letting Draco slip a bit out of him before reaching out to him again, tightened around him all the time; Draco knew he could cum with it on it's own as Potter fucked himself with his cock. He forgot that he had to prove himself, forgot that this was a unique opportunity, and paused.

The moans emanated from Potter's mouth at ever shorter intervals and grew higher as he clapped his buttocks against Draco's protruding hips; he became faster, more agitated, and eventually began panting incoherent words.

"Aah... Fuck - Malfoy..."

Draco no longer knew where the deep rumble came from, whether it was from his or Harry's mouth; he didn't know where he got the strength to hold still, he didn't know how he managed to hold back for so long.

When Potter moaned his name once more, he held him by the hips to stop his movements, and a split second later began to fuck Harry as hard, fast and recklessly as he could.

He was so indescribably tight and hot and Draco knew that he was now moaning Potter's name and that he had dug bloody craters into the white flesh on his hip and that he would cum on the spot if he would just tense up like that again -

The pulse-like throbbing that had gripped his entire body increased his tempo and became his torrent that paralyzed his thinking. Potter had leaned on his hands. His gaze was introspective, entranced, as if he felt the same as Draco; as if his thoughts had been erased as well. The glasses hung crooked from his nose, but he didn't care; which only made him look more wicked.

The unfocused look from the green eyes floated over Draco; and suddenly the whole world seemed to dissolve. Something stretched in his testicles and spread through him rapidly until the tension had taken over his entire body and hardened his cock as much as he had never felt before; the grueling heat seemed to burn him, enveloping his glans, into the unbearable.

That was it; he could no longer endure this torture, he could no longer push nor hold himself back, and just when he thought he was about to die, the semen shot out of his twitching penis in a pulsating pattern of violent contractions.

His upper body collapsed in an instant as the tension was released. Despite the radiant feeling of happiness, regret settled over him, and when he withdrew from Potter, his movements were numb and slow. "Turn around," he whispered, looking down at Potter's reddened ass, "I would like to..."

Without doing him any favors, Potter put himself in a sitting position, and because he seemed to be avoiding his gaze, Draco was afraid of what he would see in it, and to rip the plaster off, he crouched up, slowly got on his trembling legs, and walked around Potter. He noticed at the edge of his consciousness that his penis was seeping to the ground; he would most likely have been terribly embarrassed if he cold feel such ... irrelevant feelings at this time.

All that mattered now was that he gave Potter an amazing orgasm that took his breath away, which would make him return again and again. And if it was just for sex, Draco would be fine; he would go for it and let Potter's climax continue until he didn't even want to go. At the thought of it, the tip of his tongue tickles lastingly.

Potter did not look down in shame as he had expected. With his glasses dangling from one ear, he strained up his chin, challenging and obstinate as he had always been. Slowly, he let his gaze slide down on Draco's glowing body, so intense that he thought he could feel it on his skin. While showing Draco his nudity, he held his hands crossed in his lap as if he needed to earn a glimpse, letting alone bring his lips close to his genitals.

It was a moment that made one thing clear to Draco: No matter if Potter knelt before him, no matter if he let himself be overpowered by him; and if Draco tied him up - Potter would always have the upper hand. Sex had been a game Potter had played with him, not the other way around.

While his legs trembled in weakness, Draco just stood there, his eyes fixed on Potter's defiant expression, not knowing what he could do - or if he was even allowed to do anything. "May I?," he croaked, and when he realized he couldn't find the words he was looking for, he licked his lips helplessly. Then he allowed his knees to buckle and he sank to the ground in front of Potter.

He could have hit him. Spit in his face that he would never allow him anywhere close to himself again. Draco felt Potter deserved to pull his hair, thunder his fist into his mouth and twist his nipples, so he flinched as Potter burst into a happy laugh.

"Just let me rest for now. I'm not a sex machine," he said, raising one hand in a hopeless attempt to straighten his tangled mop of hair, pulling his glasses off his ear with the other.

As if by magic, Draco's gaze shot up to Potter's member, which was hanging limply between his thighs. In the fraction of a moment, he felt dismay that Potter had remained unsatisfied and would not allow Draco to deal with it as Potter's warm fingertips pressed against his cheek. "You're a bit slow today, aren't you?"

He stroked his pubic hair with the frame of his glasses, slowly drawing Draco's gaze up with them, and then he saw what Potter meant. The corners of his mouth twisted into a grin when he saw the white, thick drops that had got caught in Potter's chest hair.

Potter smiled as well. "Speaking of which - I still have some Liquid Luck left," he said, shrugging his shoulders before putting his glasses back on. "By the way, that was a rather obvious hint; I mean that I could come back if you like."

Draco stared at him with an incredulous wink, a strange mixture of happiness, confusion and excitement in his chest.

"Malfoy?" Potter waved his hand in front of his face, and Draco laughed snorting. "I just said I'd come back to fuck you again. Do you understand that?"

"Yes... Yes, I understand that," Draco murmured and shuddered under Potter's impudent choice of words. "And I'd like to tear your... ass open again," Potter laughed out loud and Draco was defenseless against the dirty grin that spread across his face, "but I don't think I can do that once more, sorry."

The laughter ceased instantly and Draco closed his eyes regretfully. Already, he felt the pain return and reappear in his heart like a shard that had been missing for completeness. "I do not know how to explain this."

"You don't have to, I'm not Ron," grumbled Potter.

Draco suppressed the desperate urge to laugh out loud at the remark, but it suddenly seemed inadequate, so he remained silent and allowed Potter's words to echo in his ear.

Suddenly, Potter broke the silence. "So, shall I arrest Zabini? As I understood, he had, um... ...had sex with you and then blackmailed you?"

Quiet on the outside, in contrast to the raging storm inside, Draco glanced into Potter's uneasy, warped expression. "You have forgotten the detail in which he used Polyjuice Potion with your hair in it to get me to have sex with him in the first place. I'd like to turn him in just for letting me see how he was changing back in front of my eyes and broke my heart."

Perhaps Potter had deliberately avoided mentioning this aspect, but Draco didn't let it bother him. It was important to him to make the truth clear. When else would he have the opportunity? "Would it be possible?" he added soberly.

"It's not possible, no," Potter replied soundlessly and stroked his index finger through the dust on the floor between them. At first, it looked unintentionally as if he was lost in thought, but he seemed to slowly approach Draco's knee. "But I might make him pay for it." Suddenly, the compelling force of Potter's gaze rested on him again and Draco drew in his breath sharply. "Polyjuice Potion has been awfully easy to brew lately, you know. As an Auror, you also learn to defend yourself without a wand. That," he paused and stroked with his fingertips light as a feather over Draco's knees, "I thought it was a joke at first, but unlike magic, fists only leave traces on the body."

A cold shiver ran down Draco's back; Potter's dark voice and his intense gaze had captured him without him noticing. "Why would you do such a thing? I mean, it has nothing to do with you directly; Zabini probably doesn't even have any hair left of you, so..."

Without taking his hand off his knee, Potter briefly averted his gaze and interrupted the sensory spell he seemed to have cast on Draco. Confused, Draco pulled his eyebrows together. Had he alienated or even hurt him when he had refused the offer?

"When you said it must have been hard to hide the real, dark Potter from my friends -"

Draco sighed. "I only said that to provoke you. So you would stop scaring me," he murmured.

Shaking his head, Potter put a finger on Draco's lips, causing a fluttering, nervous feeling in his stomach area. "But you were right. It was hard and I probably didn't always succeed; I wanted to do justice to everyone and swept myself under the carpet. It's downright absurd when you think about it. Probably I would have been forgiven if I'd behaved like an arsehole!" He smiled, but there was a mocking undertone in his expression.

"At least I did," Draco confirmed. " You were an arsehole. Often enough, I must say. But I've always forgiven you."

Perhaps tomorrow, he would curse himself for having so readily agreed. Maybe he would be ashamed of having revealed himself like that without hesitation, without thinking - but Potter's hand was on his knee and the nervous warmth of that constant touch made him forget who he was supposed to be on this day.

"Oh, good. I hope it will always be this easy for you." Potter slowly leaned over to let Draco feel as if he wanted to give him a chance to run away, but he didn't think about it; by now, he was so close to him that their lips almost touched, and as he spoke, the words brushed across Draco's skin.

"You don't want to fuck me anymore because it would hurt too much if I left." It was not a question, but a statement. Draco saw no reason to interrupt their intense contact to say anything. There was nothing he needed to correct. "But you're ignoring the fact that it's already too late."

Harry's hand snapped into the hair at the back of his head without Draco even noticing how it had gotten there; he dragged it forward and pressed their lips together hard. "I can't leave anymore," he said gruffly into her kiss and Draco smiled against his will.

Even as he tried to convince himself that Potter was just jerking around, his heart seemed to already know; why else was it throbbing warm and excitedly against his ribs, as if it would just shake off the grief of the past years?

"Now you belong to me, Draco."

**Author's Note:**

> This is one of my earlier works - which means that it's overflowing with adjectives and I've hardly ever done without tapeworm phrases.  
> Translating something like that is ... well, stressful. I probably messed up a lot of phrases, and since I don't live in an English-speaking country, I'm not sure how you deal with creating new words. Or with metaphors that may have been unknown until then.  
> Nevertheless, I hope you enjoy the story - until the end, where the sex of horror awaits you. I tried to do as good as I could, but I'm sure it's still rather hilarious! Draco tends to string together a lot of half-sentences when he's hot ... apparently.


End file.
